Veteran astronaut proves a star turn

One of the US astronauts who walked on the moon, John Young, denied in Dublin yesterday that he was the first man to smuggle a corned-beef sandwich into space. "I was the third," he claimed, in a witty address to the Institution of Engineers.

Mr Young recalled how he had commanded Apollo 10 on his third space trip in 1969, and drove more than 16 miles on the surface of the moon to collect 200 lbs of rock in 1972. In more recent years he was a space-shuttle pilot.

At the age of 71, he would still like to assist with the exploration of Mars, but it would be to dangerous - his wife would kill him, he said.

Mr Young joked about the engineers on whom the astronauts' lives were dependent. "They said the capsule would come down in the sea within a mile-and-a-half of the ship, but it was outside. Which proves the ship was in the wrong place."

But those who expected only funny tales and inspiring stories about the Apollo programme were impressed to learn that Mr Young is still working with NASA.

He detailed advances in oxygen recycling made by the Russian-built Mir space station, and spoke of NASA plans to build living space on the moon.

To live on the moon, he explained, humans would need an enclosed gravity environment with a reliable, uninterruptable power supply. Experiments had been done to grow wheat in such an artificial environment, at 600 bushels an acre compared to the National Geographic opinion that 80 bushels was a good crop. He had no doubt such intensive farming could be done in the rich lunar soil.

Planet Earth, he said, was a tough place for people to live. While the technology was in place to divert all but the biggest asteroids, history had shown that civilisation had been seriously set back many times either by collision with asteroids or by eruption of "super volcanoes".

Heavy-lift rockets with ever-increasing payloads were being developed, and "if we get the transport we can partially evacuate the planet", he said.

Predicting that things would be very different for his grandchildren over the coming century, he concluded: "It is a great ol' moon and it is well worth a visit."